CHAPTER XXVII.

ACTION OF THE SCOTCH SOCIETY-INDIAN LANDS LOST-MR. BRAINERD DISMISSED GOES TO NEWARK, N. J.-HIS LETTER.

1755.

THE defeat of General Braddock on the Monongahela, July 8th of this year, giving the Indians a lofty idea of French power and prowess and a corresponding contempt for English authority, roused the whole border tribes to hostility, so that it required all the skill of statesmen and the persuasion of missionaries to keep even the Delawares, the Oneidas, and other half-civilized nations from wielding the tomahawk. It is thought by able men that the missions of Bethel and Bethlehem, of Stockbridge and Oneida, prevented the tide of blood from flowing over Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

"The Indian settlement of Stockbridge, though in the very road of the Indians from Canada, remained secure and unmolested, also Sheffield and New Marlboro; while other parts of New England suffered severely.”*

But we are anticipating events.

* American Magazine. Philadelphia, 1757.

As a sequence to the troubled state of the country in 1755, we find the following action of the Scotch Society. We give a large extract, as the Minutes develop facts entirely new to us, and which, we think, will be new to our readers:

Extract from Minutes, dated Edinburgh, 6th November, 1755.

"The Committee reported, that since last General Meeting they have received a letter, dated the tenth of June, from their Correspondents at New York, bearing that the Indians at Bethel, having parted with their lands, would soon be obliged to move from that place; that by reason of the present dangerous situation of the back part of the country, it would be very difficult to open a mission there this year; that therefore the Correspondents had dismissed Mr. Brainerd from his charge, and that his dismission took place from the seventh of May last; that, in order to keep the Indian congregation together, the Correspondents had agreed to give Mr. William Tennent twenty-five pounds sterling per annum for visiting that congregation once a week, catechizing their children, and sometimes on the Lord's day to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to them; that, as the settlements on Indian lands are very precarious, the titles being in the chiefs, who are easily cheated out of their property, the Correspondents propose, as the most likely method of propagating the gospel there to good purpose, that the Society should either purchase a tract of land where it would be most convenient for the Indians to settle in, or apply to the government for a tract of unappropriated lands for that purpose. That the Committee, having considered the said letter, are of opinion that, in

respect of the present disturbances in that corner, it is impracticable at this time to make the purchase therein proposed, and therefore delay further consideration of that part of the letter till these disturbances are settled. But, for the reasons mentioned in the said letter, the Committee approved of Mr. Brainerd being dismissed and of the Correspondents giving twenty-five pounds per annum to Mr. Tennent for his services among the Indians, and ordered that the Correspondents be made acquainted thereof, and at the same time to notify to the Society the most convenient tract of unappropriated ground for which application might be made to the government for the purpose above mentioned."

Mr. Brainerd's own account of this transaction is as follows:

The proprietors laid claim to the land, and sued the Indians for trespass, which put an end to our schemes and threw all into confusion. We then turned our thoughts towards Susquehanna, and were attempting to provide a settlement for the Indians there, when, hostilities breaking out on the frontiers, the most barbarous murders were committed; which entirely defeated our design and put a final stop to all further attempts of that

nature.

And now, things being in such a situation, the Correspondents thought proper to dismiss me from the Society's service, which they did in May, 1755. I was then in New England, and upon my return had an invitation to Newark, which, with the advice of the Presbytery, I accepted.*

* Brainerd's letter in Sprague's Annals, vol. iii. p. 151.

At this late day, the dismission of Mr. Brainerd by the Correspondents strikes us as abrupt and premature. It seems to have been the result of the panic and confusion of the times. Mr. Brainerd makes no complaint; but his language indicates surprise and wounded feeling. It probably grew out of some temporary disagreement.

President Edwards, with his accustomed calm and kind judgment, was so hurt by it that he interfered in the matter. He says, April 10, 1756:

"With respect to Mr. Hawley and Mr. Brainerd, and their Indians, concerning which you desire to be informed, the Correspondents have altered their determination from time to time with respect to Mr. Brainerd and his Indians. They seemed inclined at first to their removal to Wawwoming, alias Wyoming, and then to Onohquanga, and then to Wyoming again; and finally, about twelve months ago, they wholly dismissed him from employ as a missionary to the Indians, and pastor to the Indian church at Bethel. I cannot say I am fully satisfied with their conduct in doing this so hastily, nor do I pretend to know so much concerning the reasons of their conduct as to have sufficient grounds positively to condemn their proceedings. However, the congregation is not wholly left as a sheep without a shepherd, and are in part committed to the care of Mr. William Tennent, who lives not far off, and is a faithful, zealous minister, who visits them and preaches to them once a week, but, I think, not often upon the Sabbath. The last fall I was in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and was present at a meeting of the Correspondents, when Mr. Tennent gave an agreeable account of the then present state of these Indians with

respect to religion, and also of their being in better circumstances as to their lands than they had been. Mr. Brainerd was then at Newark with his family, where he had been preaching as a probationer for settlement ever since Mr. Burr's dismission from that place on account of his business as president of the college. But whether Mr. Brainerd is settled, or is like to settle, there, I have not heard.

"At the forementioned meeting of the Correspondents I used some arguments to induce them to re-establish Mr. Brainerd in his former employ with his Indians, and to send them to Onohquanga. But I soon found it would be fruitless to urge the matter. What was chiefly insisted as an insuperable obstacle to Mr. Brainerd's going with his family so far in the wilderness was Mrs. Brainerd's very infirm state. Whether there was indeed any sufficient objection to such a removal at that time or no, Divine Providence has, since that, so ordered the state and consequences of the war subsisting here in America that insuperable objections are laid in the way of their removal either to Onohquanga, Wawwoming, or any other parts of America that way. The French, by their indefatigable endeavors with the nation of the Delawares, so called from their ancient seat about Delaware River, though now chiefly residing on the Susquehanna and its branches, have stirred them up to make war on the English; and dreadful have been the ravages and desolations which they have made of late on the back parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They are the principal nation inhabiting the parts about Susquehanna River, on which both Wyoming and Onohquanga stand. The latter, indeed, is above the bounds of their country, but yet not very far from them; and the Delaware Indians are frequently there, as they go to and fro; on which account